I keep getting this error message - "After Effects needs 2 frames or more for RAM preview" - for every single composition preview. And in general, After Effects CS6 is very, very slow to the point where it is not feasible to work this way. First noticed this problem getting worse and worse 2-3 weeks ago to the point where it is barely functional.

All project files are stored on a 8TB RAID with fibre connection to an identical Mac tower, which my tower references via the shared network, while all source media is on an identical RAID with direct fibre connection to this tower. We call it our 'Faux-SAN' and it's worked well for the past year, since there are only two of us editors working in tandem, with the more AE intensive stuff typically taking place on my machine.

The problem with AE must lie in this configuration we have, since when I move all project files to a local drive and restart the machine, AE then runs smooth and fast and I get no error messages. However storing project files locally cannot work in the long run and honestly, our 'Faux-SAN' has worked brilliantly without any major hiccups over the past year. What has changed in the past weeks that has made everything go crazy?

Note that one of the changes is the addition of a new Memory & Multiprocessing preference and an adjustment to memory handling on Mac OS to alleviate the problem seen when getting the message “After Effects error: RAM Preview needs 2 or more frames to playback”.